Mitt Romney's presidential campaign was under siege on Friday night as he
faced as fresh questions over when he finally quit as the boss of the
private equity firm Bain Capital.

The republican candidate has long maintained that he quit the company in 1999 to run the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, remaining only the nominal head of the company until 2002 – a position support by a statement from the company.

However the row took a new twist yesterday after it emerged that Mr Romney had testified that he had attended "board meetings" at the Boston, Massachusetts-based company in sworn testimony to prove his residential status when running for governor of the state in 2002.

"[T]here were a number of social trips and business trips that brought me back to Massachusetts, board meetings, Thanksgiving and so forth," he said in testimony that was uncovered by the Huffington Post.

The Bain row, which has dogged several previous Romney campaigns, has provided a fresh political headache for Mr Romney, crowding out his own message about America's stalling recovery and Mr Obama's poor record in creating jobs.

The Obama campaign has seized on the distraction, calling on Mr Romney to release his tax returns and arguing that the former Bain boss can be held politically responsible for the outsourcing and bankruptcies at Bain-invested companies until 2002.

Mr Romney hit back on Friday night, carrying out several television interviews.

"I was the owner of the entity that was filing this information, but I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after 1999. I left in February of 1999," he told CNN. "There's nothing wrong with being associated with Bain Capital, of course."

Mr Romney slammed the Obama campaign for suggesting he might have committed a "felony" by signing his official documents saying he was nominal head of Bain Capital after 1999, and accused the President of running personal smear campaign instead of engaging in a serious debate about the future of America.

"It's ridiculous and disturbing to come from their campaign and beneath the dignity of the president and his campaign," he told ABC news, "The president needs to take control of these people."

Mr Romney then categorically denied the insinuation that he was in any way actively involved in running Bain Capital or its investments after he left to run the Salt Lake City winter Olympics in 1999.

"I left Bain Capital in February of 1999, I went out to run the Olympics and said good-bye to my colleagues. They took over the business. They organized new funds for instance and pointed out that who managers were. They don't list me as a manager," he said.

The Romney campaign has accused Mr Obama of being a "liar" and called on him to ask "out of control staff" to apologise, but the President has refused, responding yesterday by saying it was justified to question whether Mr Romney was the CEO "Mr Fix-it" he claimed to be.

"If you're a head of a large private equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money. It's not to create jobs. It's not even to create a successful business. It's to make sure that you're maximizing returns for your investor," Mr Obama told CBS News.

"That's part of the system. But that doesn't necessarily make you qualified to think about the economy as a whole, because as president, my job is to think about the workers. My job is to think about communities, where jobs have been outsourced." Bill Clinton was also used to keep the focus on Mr Romney's personal wealth and use of tax havens, telling NBC's Today yesterday morning that it "struck me as a little odd" that Mr Romney had only issued one year of tax returns.

"That's kind of perplexed me, because this is the first time in, I don't know, more than 30 years that anybody running for president has only done that," the former President said, in comment that were rapidly distributed by the Obama campaign.

Republicans were yesterday showing growing signs of alarm that Mr Romney's campaign message was being drowned out by the furore over the candidate's tax returns and his legal, but politically damaging, use of Swiss bank accounts and off-shore tax havens.

Two Republican congressman urged Mr Romney to clear the air, as a chorus of Republican strategists warned that the Romney campaign was in danger of being blown of course over Bain and taxes, just as his first political campaign was in 1994 in a Massachusetts senate raced against Ted Kennedy.

"His personal finances, the way he does things, his record, are fair game," said Pete Sessions, a Republican congressman from Texas who is chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Walter Jones, a Republican congressman for North Carolina was even more direct. "I think he should release his financial records and I think if he does it in July it would be a lot better than in October," he told CNN, "Whenever you are asking for the vote of the American people that you need to fully disclose what your holdings are, if you have any." However other Republican analysts urged Mr Romney to stand firm. Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan White House aide said Mr Romney should "sit tight" and not be bounced into disclosing his tax returns by the Obama campaign machine.

"Obama can't run on his record, so he's using the tried and tested tactic of turning the guns on the other guy, it's the only choice he has and I believe people will see through it. People want jobs, they aren't bothered about when Mr Romney left Bain," he said.

In another apparent attempt to shift the conversation away from Bain and taxes, the hugely influential Drudge Report website, whose founder Matt Drudge is close to the Romney inner circle, published a story that Condoleeza Rice might stand as Mr Romney's vice-president.

Ms Rice was key speaker at a Romney fundraising event Utah last month but has said there is "no way" she would stand, leading many commentators to dismiss the report an "distraction play".